by Susan Wiggs
As they made their way to the hall, Caitlin gave hasty explanations. Then, full of fury and fear, she planted herself in front of Logan, who sat in his thronelike chair on the dais.
Staring at her as if she were a ghost, he jammed his thumb into his mouth, chewing it to ward off enchantment.
“Feeling guilty, Logan?” Caitlin taunted. “Aye, I’m back, come to haunt a traitor.”
He yanked his thumb free. “Arrah, it’s redeemed I’m wanting to be. Sure haven’t I done my best. For two weeks I’ve been sending runners to your husband advising him to seek terms. But the madness is at him. The only way he’ll lay down his arms is with his life—and the life of every fool who fights at his side.”
Caitlin closed her eyes, picturing Wesley battling the English legions. For her. For Clonmuir. For Ireland.
Magheen stepped up beside Caitlin. “And I’ve been telling you for two weeks that some things, Logan Rafferty, are worth dying for.” She tugged at Caitlin’s sleeve. “Come. Wesley sent us Clonmuir’s horses so the English would find no prize if they managed to breach the walls.”
Caitlin blinked. “The black?”
“Of course.”
Logan shot to his feet. “By God, woman! I forbid you to go to Clonmuir.”
Magheen tossed her head. “I take no orders from a coward.”
Thirty minutes later, wearing breastplates and helms from Logan’s armory, Caitlin, Magheen, Daisy, and Tom rode hard for Clonmuir. They had left Laura in the indulgent care of Aileen Breslin, and Logan in a state of blind shock.
They had gone only a short distance when the thunder of pursuit sounded behind them. Caitlin whipped a glance back.
Logan and a company of men-at-arms came on in a flurry of dust, the particles aglow with the hues of the sunset. Weapons rode at their hips, and banners fluttered over their heads.
“Stop,” said Caitlin to her companions. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”
Logan drew up between Caitlin and Magheen. He handed Caitlin a swatch of black silk. “You forgot something, my lady. Veil yourself with this.”
Hope rose in Caitlin’s chest as she recognized the golden harp of Clonmuir embroidered on the fabric. “Thank you, brother-in-law.” She secured the veil so that the silk flowed down her back.
Logan turned to Magheen, reached out and touched her arm with a gauntleted hand. “And I forgot something as well, my love. I forgot my place in the world, my sacred duty as your husband and as an Irishman.”
Of one mind and one purpose, gilded by the light of sunset, the Irish surged forward.
Logan lifted his fist to the sky. “Fianna and Eireann!”
* * *
Evening closed over Clonmuir, but this night the Roundheads did not retreat to the abandoned houses of the town.
With a twist of cold dread, Wesley knew the reason.
The Roundheads had battered a huge breach in the wall—an opening wide enough to admit six horsemen riding abreast. Logan had been badgering Wesley for days to seek terms. Staring at the breach, Wesley was tempted. Then a memory intruded, Caitlin’s voice, fierce with conviction: Clonmuir is my home. I’d defend it until the last stone is torn from my dying hands. He knew what her decision would be. He would not fail her by giving in.
His arms ached from twisting the cranequins of his big crossbow. The few muskets and the small cache of gunpowder had been spent early in the siege. The war flails, hammers, axes, and swords were of little use against the distant cannons.
As night fell, the English soldiers flowed like black shadows toward Clonmuir. Wesley took aim with his crossbow and pulled the trigger. A man screamed and fell.
For you, Caitlin. Wesley glanced at the first bright star of evening. For you.
Seamus MacBride and Father Tully worked a catapult. With the wind whipping his beard, the elder MacBride resembled a wizard. They strapped a rock in place. Father Tully blessed it. Seamus loosed the hoisting rope from the windlass. The rock sailed over the wall and felled two Englishmen.
Conn and Curran made good use of their yew longbows, bringing down soldiers as quickly as they could shoot.
It wasn’t enough. A swarm of Roundheads funneled into the breach.
“To the yard!” he yelled, flinging down his crossbow and drawing his heavy broadsword.
Fiery Irish curses roared from the men. Swords and axes, hammers and war flails made from grain-threshing tools, appeared in their hands. Wesley leapt down from the wall walk.
His mind emptied. He knew only the numbing reverberation of sword blows, only the clang of steel, only the searing heat of hopeless hatred.
The enemy came on, streaming in nightmare waves across the yard. Torches ignited the thatched outbuildings. Screaming shadows streaked through the darkness. Irish curses trumpeted from hoarse throats while the English fought in weird, single-minded silence.
Mounted soldiers and warriors on foot harried Wesley from all sides. He felt his strength seeping like sweat into the bloodied ground. Stealing glimpses through the smoke and flame, he saw Rory, a senseless heap in the mud. Father Tully and Seamus desperately tried to repulse four men armed with plug bayonets.
And then, riding a low tide of despair, Wesley saw Titus Hammersmith enter through the main gate. With his sausagelike curls bobbing beneath the edge of his helm, the Roundhead commander rode a bay war-horse toward the guard tower.
Curran Healy had sprung from concealment near the tower to sling a stone at a foot soldier.
Riding with icy precision, Hammersmith bore down on the unsuspecting boy. Wesley bolted across the yard.
“Over here, Titus!” he bellowed, waving his arms to call attention to himself. “Or have you sunk to butchering children?”
Hammersmith checked his horse and turned while Curran melted back into the shadows. A musketball whined past Wesley’s head. A warrior encased in siege armor stepped in his way. Furious, Wesley held his sword in a two-handed grip and swung out. The bone-shattering impact nearly tore the blade from Wesley’s hand, but left no more than a dent in the armor.
A curse of frustration had barely escaped his lips when a sledgehammer swung out of nowhere. With a clang like the clapper striking a great bell, the hammer clubbed the warrior on the top of his helmeted head. He fell without a sound, and Liam the smith gave Wesley a raised fist of victory.
Wesley ran through the smoke, jumping the body of a fallen wolfhound. Reaching Hammersmith, he swung out with his sword, slicing the stirrup. Hammersmith slid off-balance. Seizing the moment, Wesley dragged him from the saddle.
Hammersmith coiled into a ball on the ground. His booted feet exploded in a blur of motion, catching Wesley in the chest and sending him reeling back. In one graceful motion, Hammersmith surged to his feet.
“Aye, catch your breath, my lad,” Hammersmith taunted, “for I’ll give you a fight you won’t soon forget.” Gripping his sword in both hands, he hacked at Wesley.
Wesley stumbled backward, trying to buy time to catch his breath.
“You’d run from me?” Hammersmith goaded. “What would your dear wife think of that?” Seeing the furious look on Wesley’s face, he drove the insult deeper. “Aye, we all had her on her dying breath, my friend, and a sorry lay she was by then!”
Wesley felt something inside him snap. He no longer cared that he could hardly breathe, that his sword hilt slipped like a channel trout in his sweaty grip. He no longer cared whether he lived or died. But first, he intended to kill.
The Roundhead commander’s well-aimed blade hissed through the air toward Wesley’s head.
Wesley ducked and returned the strike. Irish curses streamed from him as if he had been born speaking the tongue.
Hammersmith fought quietly, straitlaced and unimaginative, in the manner of Cromwell’s army. He emitted no soul-deep calls of triumph or despair, gave no heartening battle cries, invoked neither saint nor monarch.
In a deadly calm corner of his mind, Wesley pitied him. Hammersmith had never known true passion,
while Wesley had learned to commit his whole heart and soul—and soon his life—to a cause. Caitlin had given him that. In return, he would give her memory the death of Titus Hammersmith.
Wesley brought his sword up and out to meet a new strike. The impact reverberated numbingly up his arm. He heard a metallic clatter. His sword felt strangely light.
Hammersmith had broken it in two.
“Yield, Hawkins,” Hammersmith ordered. “Yield, and pray I remember you’re still an Englishman.”
“Call a retreat,” Wesley countered, surprising himself with the clear strength of his own voice. “Retreat, and beg God you die an easy death.”
Hammersmith said no more, but came on with rhythmic swings of his sword, a reaper felling a bloody harvest with his scythe. Wesley fended off blows with the stub of his sword. Hammersmith backed him step by step to the wall. Wesley’s circle of awareness tightened until he saw only the gleaming blade swinging like a pendulum, its razor edge coming closer and closer, kissing his heart with death.
“Oh, Jesus,” he wheezed through his teeth. “God have mercy on my soul.” Wesley ducked beneath a whizzing blow and felt the cool wind on his neck. He waited for the bright light of oblivion to close over him.
But he remained alone in this world to face the thrusts of his enemy’s sword.
Hammersmith lunged. Wesley twisted to one side. The blade ripped through his tunic, through the leather of his cuirass.
Hot pain seared his chest. Jumping backward up two steps toward the walk, he prayed for the light, the pulse of mystic power that would receive his agony. Only a faint glimmer penetrated the urgency of the moment.
The English blade slashed out. Wesley backed up three more steps. Four. Five. The soothing light retreated to a pinpoint.
“Not now, for Christ’s sake! Not now!” Wesley eluded blow after blow, his lungs aching with exertion.
“My God,” Wesley begged, “who—what are you?”
I am you. A last flicker, and the light vanished. Forever. The finality of it stung like a small, secret death in his soul.
“No! Come back, I—”
“By God, you’re a madman!” Hammersmith pressed on, stronger than ever, closing in for the kill.
Wesley reached the wall walk. He could hear the roar and crash and hiss of the sea far below the cliffs. The stiff wind buffeted his back.
Below, the yard rang with clanging weapons and screaming horses and bellowing men. The Irish battle cries had dissolved into mindless bellows of pain.
“Do you hear that?” Hammersmith demanded. “They’re dying! Yield, and I’ll consider being merciful.”
“You really don’t understand, do you, Titus?” With new fervor, plumbed from some inner well of strength, Wesley spoke through his teeth. “To an Irishman, death in battle is a greater mercy than surrendering to scum like you.”
Hammersmith’s sword made a clean arc toward Wesley’s neck. The blade slammed against his gorget. The force of the blow nearly choked him. The pain rang through his neck, his head, his vitals.
The white light did not come to take it away. At last Wesley understood why the gentle priest inside him had left. It was time for them both to die.
He did not know why he bothered to ward off still more blows with his broken sword. He did not know why he bothered to duck and twist and feint from side to side.
All was lost. Caitlin. Laura. And now Clonmuir.
Hammersmith’s sword struck the wall. A flurry of sparks briefly lit the air, illuminating his adversary’s face. And in that face Wesley saw the destruction of Ireland.
He must not die alone. A few more steps, and they would reach Traitor’s Leap, the sheer drop to the sea. Together, he and Hammersmith would plunge into eternity.
Out of the corner of his eye, Wesley spotted movement. Ducking beneath a blow, he thrust upward with his half blade. Too short. The jagged end snagged in Hammersmith’s blousy trousers.
Shadows rippled across the yard. A keening wind tore the shroud of clouds from the rising moon.
At that precise moment Wesley spied, in silvery splendor, a silk-veiled warrior on a magnificent black stallion, sailing through the main gate.
Good God, had he died and gone to heaven already?
Hammersmith made a driving thrust. Wesley moved aside. Instinct, not thought, directed his movements now.
For his heart, his mind, and his soul were focused entirely on the lithe warrior.
On Caitlin.
She was a rainbow cleaving through a sky of boiling clouds, a vision of light in the darkness of his soul. She was a miracle. Wesley glowed inside like a pilgrim whose faith had been restored. He dared not question what marvel had brought her here with a small army at her back. He knew only that he was not alone. All was not lost.
Renewed power surged like wildfire through him. “You sorry son of a bitch,” he said to Titus.
With cold rationality he maneuvered himself along the embattled parapet between two embrasures. He waited calmly for the next thrust. Hammersmith had him cornered. His death was a certainty. But for Caitlin he could do one last deed. He could escort Hammersmith to his death. He pictured them struggling, falling together, the terrifying flight to the jagged rocks below and the sea that offered the ultimate oblivion, the sea that had brought him to Caitlin.
Bending low, he threw aside his broken sword and made a beckoning motion with his hands. “Aye, come to me, Titus. Don’t let steel get in the way of our fight.”
“You tempt me with the prospect of an easy brawl. But I’m a soldier and not given to foolish games.”
“You invented the word foolish, Titus. All of Ireland laughs at you.”
With a bellow of rage, Hammersmith lunged. His blade scored a deep furrow in Wesley’s cuirass. Seizing the hilt of the weapon, Wesley ripped it from Hammersmith’s grip and flung it away with a clatter.
Possessed by a final surge of strength, he held fast to Hammersmith and made for the top of the wall.
“You’re mad.” Hammersmith’s voice shook.
“It hardly matters now.” Wesley shoved Hammersmith toward the edge.
The Roundhead’s eyes rolled back in fear. He clung like a limpet to Wesley. “Please, I beg you—”
“Plead with the devil, for I’m taking you to hell with me.”
Hammersmith hooked his thumbs into Wesley’s windpipe and pressed hard.
The two of them teetered on the precipice. Stars of pain shattered in Wesley’s head. Consciousness ebbed. He knew he had only seconds to act.
He pulled up his knee and pushed it against Hammersmith’s chest.
Still clinging to Wesley, Hammersmith flew over the wall. Wesley felt a rush of wind, a weird, momentary weightlessness. Terror and regret and love streaked through his mind in those final moments.
Then a hand grabbed him by the seat of his trews. The leather ripped. The tendons in Wesley’s arms stretched taut from the weight of Hammersmith. He pounded the Roundhead’s clinging hands against the wall. Hammersmith screamed in terror. His body tumbled down, wheeling hundreds of feet below into blackness.
“And where do you think you’re off to, a chara?” said a familiar and completely unexpected voice.
Blinking in confusion, Wesley leaned out to peer over the wall. The rushing surf outlined the thrusting rocks of the shoreline. The sea had already swallowed her sacrificial offering.
Turning back to his rescuer, Wesley doubled his fists. “You were too late to save him, Logan. Now, about that challenge...” But fatigue and fear weakened his knees, and he stumbled.
Logan Rafferty threw back his head and shouted with laughter. His braided beard shone silver in the moonlight. “Time was, I might have taken advantage of your state.” He extended his hand, helped Wesley to his feet, and jammed a dented helmet on his head. “I didn’t come to save Hammersmith, but to right a grievous wrong. Let’s finish this, my friend.”
Adjusting the helm, Wesley blinked in disbelief. Then, with a cry of jubilation,
he staggered down the stairs to the yard, snatched up a sword from the mud, and rushed to join the fighting.
And found little fighting to be had.
With his hammer upraised, Liam chased five Roundheads out of the yard. Rory had revived; Wesley heard his hellish war cries through the smoke. He fought alongside a giant blond woman Wesley did not recognize. Seamus unleashed a pack of wolfhounds on the Roundhead cavalry. Father Tully grabbed a dagger from a rabid-looking Englishman. He swiftly made the sign of the cross over the man, then slit his throat.
Tom Gandy—Gandy, for God’s sake, looking like a deadly Cupid—calmly shot off arrows from the gate tower. Wielding a charred broom, Magheen chased, with age-old fervor, a stray soldier.
And then there was Caitlin. Lovely as the moon, graceful as the wind, she rode down panicked soldiers, herding them out of the yard with expert arcs of her sword. Her task accomplished, she gave a great whoop of triumph.
Pure love flooded Wesley’s heart. He wrenched off his helm and flung it away. Spying him, Caitlin did the same. Her tawny hair rippled like hammered gold. Her eyes shone brighter than the stars of midsummer night.
The stars of eternity.
His throat clogged with words he could not speak. He grasped her about the waist and lifted her from the saddle. The shells of their breastplates clashed as they came together. They were kissing—hard, desperately, joyfully—before her feet touched the ground.
“Caitlin. You’ve come back to me.”
“Aye, my Wesley. This time, forever.”
“But how—”
She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Tom will tell it better than I. And I’ve the rest of my life to be making explanations. For now, my darling Wesley, I’ll be after saying just one thing to you.”
He tasted the damp tendrils of hair at her temple. “And what is that?”
“I love you. Dia linn!” Her kisses rained upon his astonished face. “I love you!”
“That’s three things,” he said shakily.
She laughed with a sweet, pure joy that nearly brought him to his knees. “And before the night is gone, it’ll be a thousand more.” She turned and loosed the cinch of the black’s saddle. From out of nowhere Brigid came and lugged the saddle away.